The Leaning Tower of Pasta: Lessons in Team Performance and Creativity From a Core Surgical Training Boot Camp Design Challenge.

Aims: Unity of effort is an important component of strategic leadership and management theory associated with Core Surgical Training (CST) outcome. The aim was to determine the impact of team diversity on task completion: a creative design challenge, during CST Boot camp.

Methods: Attendees (n = 44) at a single Statutory Education Body's CST Boot camp were stratified into teams related to specialty theme, and set a design challenge as described by Peter Skillman, to build the tallest free-standing tower out of spaghetti (20 pieces), tape (1 m), and string (1 m), with a marshmallow on top in 18 minutes.

Summative Supervisor Reporting: A Quality Performance Perspective.

Objective: This study aimed to quality assure Assigned Educational Supervisor (AES) reports, using UK Joint Committee on Surgical Training objective criteria, to evaluate contribution to Annual Review of Competence Progression.

Design: Consecutive 145 AES reports from 75 trainers regarding 68 Core Surgical Trainees were assessed from 9 hospitals (2 Tertiary centers [77 reports], 7 District General Hospitals [68 reports]). Reports were assessed by independent assessors based on free text related to performance mapped to curricular objectives, operative logbooks, and Clinical Supervisor reports, and overall summary grades assigned ranging from development required, adequate, good to excellent.